The Scholar in Politics a Conservative 


ADDRESS BY 

The Honorable Samuel W. McCall 


Delivered before the Delta Chapter of 
Massachusettst Phi Beta Kappa^ June 16, t903 


Reprinted by permission from the Tufts College Graduate 




The Tufts College Press 

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MAR 1 8 1916 







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IN POLITICS A 



THE SCHOLAR 


CONSERVATIVE 


The annual meetings of perhaps the most learned society in 
the republic of letters, and of kindred societies, are commonly 
marked by plain speech, and sometimes by radical speech, upon 
the scholar’s special duty to the state and organized society. I 
remember that at my college, at the graduation of the class just 
before my own, a distinguished gentleman, who afterwards 
became the candidate of his party for Vice-President, presented 
the idea that it was the scholar’s prime function in politics to op¬ 
pose the established. An occasion like this invites, or possibly 
tempts, one to pass over platitudes which have delighted so 
often, and to present something novel, or at least striking. 
Sensationalism, however, has its dangers,—it is usually safer to 
be dull. You are not likely to explode dynamite under the 
foundations of social order, or to add to the active forces which 
may rend society asunder. f shall not undertake the hopeless 
task of trying to present to you anything new upon the pecu¬ 
liar relation of the scholar or educated man to the nation, but f 
shall speak to you of that relation in connection with certain 
tendencies that now seem to me especially, calling for attention. 

Let me say at the outset that I would by no means have the 
educated man enter life as though he were a member of a sepa¬ 
rate class. The fact that he has a liberal education gives him 
no warrant to govern his fellow men. He must divest himself 
of the notion, or if he does not the world will do n for him. 



4 


that he is a Heaven-sent being, commissioned to lead by any 
authority contained in his diploma. The college training will 
at the most raise only a presumption in his favor, for it is the 
glory of our democracy that a man is what the test shows him 
to be ; that he must prove his worth by actual doing ; and that 
he must produce the passport of his own fitness upon every 
highway. You will ordinarily be permitted to do the work 
you are fitted to do, and only that. 

By the educated man 1 do not mean the college-trained man, 
merely. The presumption is that he is educated, but quite 
often we know that he is not. He may sometimes be too 
much educated in books and, losing the grasp upon practical 
affairs, his influence may swell the emotional forces which, if 
found in too great proportion, will form a most serious foe to the 
stability of the nation. On the other hand, some of the most 
splendidly educated men in our country’s history, men especi¬ 
ally trained for the greatest kind of work ever given man to do, 
have been those whose debt to the schools was of the most 
trifling character. They were endowed by nature with resplen¬ 
dent gifts. They were trained in the duties of everyday life, 
in the contests of the courts, and in bearing with seriousness 
the great public responsibilities that were cast upon them. 

There is probably as little to be said for the proposition that 
a college education would have improved Lincoln and Washing¬ 
ton as practical statesmen, as that it would have kept them from 
their great careers. They were marvelous men, and the times 
demanded just such products as they were, such a blending of 
great natural talents with the practical insight derived from the 
hardest knocks of life—knocks that would have brought even 
strong men to the ground, but were needed to make the most 
of these Titans. But it is not without force that one of these 
men took care to give his son a college education, and the 
other left by his will what at the time was a large fortune for 
the establishment of a university. 





5 


For my purpose to-day I mean by the scholar in politics one 
who by special training in our colleges, or outside of them, has 
become fitted to discharge in an ample manner the duty of the 
citizen. There is a demand for men who will study public 
questions closely, and not trust to a happy chance, or what is 
called destiny. We are so much absorbed in our private 
afi-'airs—most of us in gaining a living, and some in getting 
rich—that we are apt to treat public problems only superfici¬ 
ally, and to decide according to the most striking aspect of the 
moment. Jf we see a shocking instance of depravity we are 
apt, while the impression is new, to level all the batteries of 
legislation against that particular thing, unmindful that we may 
thereby threaten to overturn a great rampart of laws erected 
by centuries of labor and sacrifice for the protection of mankind. 

You will recall a horrible deed of depravity that shocked the 
nation two years ago. For a moment it was seriously proposed 
to take away our most cherished political right, and a constitu¬ 
tional convention, sitting at that time in one of the historic states 
of the Union, voted to strike out of the constitution the right 
of free speech—a vote which, in a calmer moment, it rescinded. 
It would have uselessly taken away the right upon which the 
safety of our free government most effectually reposes,—indeed, 
would have made the very crime which it detested more likely 
to occur, by penning up beneath the surface the dangerous gases 
which might explode and overthrow society. 

In despotic governments, which cherish the privileges of the 
few rather than the good of the many, the real scholar is 
usually radical. If he is honest he will likely incur ostracism 
or banishment in proclaiming the evils which he perceives. 
But in a democratic government, where there is substantial 
equality of political rights and where the State may be embarked 
upon perilous enterprises with little knowledge, I think the 
highest function of the scholar is to be conservative. He will 
preserve the liberty which exists by preventing hazardous and 


6 


doubtful experiments, and by preventing the excesses which 
are the common cause for superseding a democratic govern¬ 
ment by government of a more exclusive character. The 
American constitution is not exactly what Macaulay character¬ 
ized it, all sail and no anchor,” but it so readily permits 
motion that a conservative force becomes vitally important. 

The spirit of the ideal citizen under a government like ours 
will be what Stevenson calls the “ hope-starred, full-blooded 
spirit,” at once aggressive and sane, which shows its exuberance 
rather in preserving and building up than in smashing the 
existing order. Assuming that our system of government is 
the justest yet discovered, that better than any other it gives to 
each individual the opportunity of self-development, this spirit 
will occupy itself in preserving our democracy from the pecu¬ 
liar evils to which democracy is liable, and, for the sake of 
preserving it, will batter down the palpable abuses which 
threaten the system. Do not imagine that an easy task. It 
will require almost the ferocity of spirit of rare Ben Jonson 
when he said :— 

With an armed and resolved hand. 

I’ll strip the ragged follies of my time, 

Naked as at their birth. And with a whip of steel, 

Print wounding lashes in their iron ribs. 

I fear no mood, stampt in a private brow. 

When I am pleased t’ unmask a public vice.” 

When I advise conservatism I mean conservatism with refer¬ 
ence to our system, and not with reference to the statutes and 
laws which it may have called into being. Burke well said that 
enactment is more blessed than repeal. The American 
people are an inventive people, and many are the schemes they 
have brought forth to make men perfect by statute, until the 
freedom of which we boast has largely been taken away by our¬ 
selves. Some will ask what is the use of a government, unless 


7 


the evils that afflict society are cured by law. Men laudably 
ambitious to associate their names with the advancement of 
society try to write their particular scheme for human advance¬ 
ment upon the statute books. Believers in a paternal govern¬ 
ment, philanthropists, and self-seekers are constantly invoking, 
and often successfully, the action of our legislative machinery, 
until the individual is bound in fetters, and in attempting to con¬ 
form to the artificial standards instead of those set up by natuie 
he is apt to wonder if the object of government is to take away 
instead of to preserve liberty. More than once has our coun¬ 
try as a whole, and have the states which compose it, had to 
pay roundly for their daring statutory experiments, and for put¬ 
ting their puny enactments against the laws of Nature. 

When the minds of millions of men are working along the 
same lines upon any question, they reach conclusions easily. 
There is generated in the atmosphere something that will not 
tolerate counter arguments, but, after a time, when the popular 
enthusiasm disappears and the dry light returns again, you 
wonder that any such delusion could have been cherished. 
Here is the scope for the really great statesman in a govern¬ 
ment like ours—to hold the rudder true in spite of adverse popu¬ 
lar winds, when even Palinurus could hardly keep the true 
course, and thus realize the best results of popular government 
by protecting the people from their first impulses and by giving 
them time to think. 

To illustrate, take the conduct of General Grant when the 
marvelous business prosperity immediately following the Civil 
War began to be checked, and when the people attributed the 
prosperity which they had enjoyed to what was in part respon¬ 
sible for its decline—the infiation of our paper currency. 
Grant stood like a rock between the representatives of the 
people and a still further inflation. He braved unpopularity 
by doing so. He might have gained wide-spread approval by 
overturning the established order of finance, and by leading 


8 


instead of breasting the threatened financial revolution. History 
already recognizes the wisdom and greatness of his conduct. 

When the popular imagination is excited, the thing it desires 
looks large, and it requires a cool head indeed to reduce the 
object to the proportions demanded by truth. It becomes 
a very trifling matter at such times to make, of the largest 
ocean in the world, an ocean ordained to be the great highway 
for all nations,—our own private fish pond. We can draw the 
most fabulous drafts upon our imagination for the wonderful 
trade that we are to get. Hundreds of millions of Chinamen 
are at once to go into the business of consuming our own particu¬ 
lar brand of eye water, and there is an epithet ready at hand for 
the man who cannot see these wonderful visions through the 
enormous spectacles of the moment. If you do not draw your 
conclusions easily you will be called a pessimist, a not uncom¬ 
mon epithet for the man who does not wildly gallop in the 
chase after new schemes and new governmental enterprises ; 
and the admiring crowd will, for the moment, turn to the 
statesman who serenely leads his country into the most menac¬ 
ing perils and at the same time fittingly inculcates the beauties 
of optimism. The easy assumption that a nation cannot com¬ 
mit a blunder is an effective method of convicting any doubter 
on this charge of pessimism. To my mind the true optimist is 
one who does not despair of the republic, and who does not 
despair of her because of his faith that, however wrong or mis¬ 
led she may at the moment be, she will ultimately shape her 
course according to the demands of truth and justice. Cer¬ 
tainly, if optimism is mere undiscriminating approval of what¬ 
ever the governmental agents of a nation happen to do, then 1 
hope we shall never enthrone it here, iiowever high it might 
deserve to rank among the Chinese virtues. 

In the light of the very recent action of the political department 
of the government, now sustained by the Supreme Court by a 
majority of one, the same majority by which the English judges 


9 


decided against John Hampden, it would appear that our fathers 
rebelled against England and founded a government equipped to 
do the very thing against which their revolution was a protest, and 
that the nation which Lincoln freed from slavery may constitu • 
tionally hold their fellow men in chains, and govern them, 
subject to such restrictions only as are found in the goodness of 
our souls. Whether this is just or unjust, constitutional or un¬ 
constitutional, I shall not argue, but when this process is called 
giving subject communities freedom, I shall pause long enough 
to protest against the abasement of a noble word. He who 
holds his life, his liberty, and property at the mere caprice of 
another, is not a free man but a slave. Our boasted doctrine 
of self-government thus becomes merely a domestic or geo¬ 
graphical doctrine, a doctrine peculiarly to be enjoyed by the 
American people, which they in turn are at entire liberty to 
deny to others. When our fathers declared that goverments 
derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, they 
meant governments established between certain latitudes in 
North America. In unselfishness the declaration, so construed, 
resembles what this same modern policy has made our Monroe 
Doctrine appear to be—a doctrine in which we satisfy our long¬ 
ings after justice by warning the over-crowded nations of the 
other hemisphere to keep their hands off our sparsely populated 
continent, while we ourselves leap across the Pacific and seize a 
thousand islands at a single stroke. If we shall not reverse what 
we have so recently done, it will hardly be said hereafter, if 
a unity is sought for in our national life, that American political 
doctrines are broad enough for all mankind, or that, according 
to American ideas, the principles of right and justice do not 
change with the skies that cover them. 

You will, then, find it necessary sometime strongly to uphold 
those things in our government which have hitherto been 
regarded as axiomatic and fundamental. We have been declaim¬ 
ing about self-government for a century and a quarter, and we 


lO 


find the doctrine not merely practically condemned by the 
action of our government, but theoretically condemned by the 
utterances of some of its leading citizens. 

1 shall not attempt to compare the merits ot the American 
system with those of other systems. 1 attribute the marvelous 
progress of the last century of the world’s history to the Ameri¬ 
can Revolution more than to any other event. It ushered in 
the era of the people. It unshackled the most marvelous force 
upon this planet, the human intellect, and, by giving equal 
privileges to all, it set millions of minds in practical motion, 
and accomplished far more than systems of philosophers or the 
efforts of the few mainly absorbed in governing the many, and 
it sent the world spinning ahead upon its course a thousand 
years. By its direct influence upon the American people, and 
by the influence of its example in liberalizing the institutions 
of other nations, and in calling their genius into play, the Ameri¬ 
can Revolution has proved itself of incalculable value to man¬ 
kind. What has the emancipation of the intellect of the mill¬ 
ions of mankind not accomplished How marvelously it has 
magnified the powers with which nature endowed man ! It 
has vastly extended the range of the human eye. It has 
expanded the compass of the human voice so that it may 
be heard even across mountains and under seas, or years after 
it sprang from the living lips. It has disseminated comfort, so 
that the mechanic of to-day is more luxuriously housed than the 
monarch of a century ago. Most of all, intelligence has been 
diffused, and if, by the sudden popularization of culture, we 
see very much of its cruder forms, we can sec enough to make 
us believe that its coming is sure, and that its triumph will 
be genuine. We have witnessed that most permanent and 
noble sort of conquest, the peaceful and steady encroachment 
of American ideas and institutions, conquering the world. 

I fancy you will not apply the epithet “ little Americans,” 
borrowed from the jingo vocabulary of Great Britain, to those 


who would prefer to have America the beneficent sort of world 
power she has been rather than the conquering portent some 
would have her be. We speak of American freedom sometimes 
as if it were a mere commodity, to be transported across the 
sea like so much molasses in the hold of a ship, as if it were 
what Mr. Reed called “canned freedom.” Perhaps the 
finest utterance 1 heard some weeks ago in this hall, in a really 
fine debate, was that we talked of endowing other peoples with 
American freedom and of lifting them up, as if the process 
were a mere surgical operation. Other communities need only 
the opportunity, to absorb as much of the spirit of our institu¬ 
tions as they are fitted to receive, and you cannot force them to 
assimilate more if you threaten them with annihilation. 

You will not only be called upon to defend what we have 
regarded as fundamental and established ideas, but you will have 
the opportunity to exercise essential conservatism in combating 
transparent fallacies and prejudices. 

To illustrate again, it is only a short time since we were 
urged to adopt an Anglo-Saxon alliance, whatever that may be, 
and whoever the Saxons are. With our heterogeneous popula- 
lation, and with the great mass of Celtic and other races in the 
British Empire, the Anglo-Saxon alliance was well termed by 
Dr. Goldwin Smith “an ethnological fancy,” and yet we 
were told that what we called the Anglo-Saxons should unite to 
regulate the world and reclaim those parts of it under the dom¬ 
ination of the so-called Latin races. 1 mention this simply as 
another popular delusion, which is now on the wane, but 
which threatened to do harm. I think even a Saxon, if you 
could find one, would admit that the world is somewhat in 
debt to the so-called Latin peoples, who have splendidly ex¬ 
hibited what Daudet calls “ the gilded imagination of a sun¬ 
lit race.” 

In those things in the world which survive,—in its master¬ 
pieces of poetry and prose, in the wonderful tints which it has 


put upon canvas, in its speaking marbles, in its science, and in 
most ot the things which lift man out of barbarism, the debt of 
mankind is quite as great to the so-called Latin races as it is to 
the race from which we claim to spring. Our own debt as a 
people is also peculiar. We owe to them the discovery of the 
continent upon which we live, and the establishment of the 
nation of which we are so proud. The architect of the uni¬ 
verse, I suppose, would have had little difficulty in doing away 
with race variety, and would have made all peoples not merely 
of one blood, but have made them all Anglo-Saxon, if things 
would have been better. Race hatred is kindred with the war 
passion — that narrow chauvinism which would lead one to 
destroy all who are not members of his own clan. 

We cannot complain if the standards we have set up for the 
judgment of the Latin should be applied to ourselves. You 
will remember that we were just now employing some 
large words of contempt concerning the Spaniards, and were 
indulging in furious declamation against certain practices of 
his, and yet, if we are fair, we shall admit that in adding an¬ 
other to the uniformly ghastly chapters of tropical colonization, 
whether written by Spaniard, or Frenchman, or Englishman, 
we have done some of the very things of which we accused 
Spain, only we give to our own action a very noble name. If 
we cannot attain the high beatitude of Voltaire, and pardon 
the virtues of our enemies, we should have a care against put¬ 
ting ourselves in a position where we are compelled to adopt 
his vices, and we should reflect that it is hardly an ideal way 
for preserving the character of a nation, to spare the national 
sins, or to bedeck national crimes with virtuous names. 

A well recognized danger of democracies is seen in the ten¬ 
dency in public matters to appeal to the spectacular. Our rul¬ 
ers, or rather our governmental agents,— for we are our own 
rulers,— play to a very large house. Things must be set off in 
a grand manner. And this tendency, I think, leads especially 


13 


to the aggrandizement of the military spirit. In England, 
whose regular war establishment upon both land and sea is 
vastly larger than our own, it is rare that a soldier is found in 
the cabinet which is her real ruler, and you will have to go 
back nearly three-fourths of a century to find a soldier in the 
office of Prime Minister. 

War and statesmanship are regarded as separate trades in 
that country, each demanding a special training ; but here the 
rule is directly the opposite. It is an exception here to choose 
a man as President who has not been a soldier. The party 
managers appear to think there is something about a military 
hero attractive to the popular fancy, and when they could not 
find a great hero they have sometimes contented themselves 
with a little one. Possibly our party leaders are mistaken, and 
are not good stage managers. The party that has often been 
beaten since the Civil War won twice with the military hero 
entirely unrepresented on its ticket, and twice again it barely 
lost. We were happily situated to realize the dream of poets 
and exhibit the blessings of peace. We have not wholly 
thrown away the great advantage of our position by thrusting 
ourselves upon the other hemisphere, near to the point where 
the national collisions of the future threaten. 

The age may come in the not distant future to which war 
will seem as horrible as cannibalism seems to our own day. I 
believe that America still has the great practical contribution of 
peace to add to its other gifts to mankind. You will find a 
worthy field for your effort in opposing wars of conquest 
carried on under whatever guise, and in urging the settlement 
of disputes between masses of men by the same peaceful arbi¬ 
tration that prevents them in their own private affairs from 
settling their differences with the rifle or the sword. 

I'hose questions that are fundamental in our system are of 
the highest importance, and will receive your attention first. 
After them come the economic questions, which require the 


best thought of the most carefully trained minds. They are 
vital to the prosperity of the nation, and to the well-being of 
the individual citizen. We are pressing forward in our mad 
rush for wealth to have this generation “realize” upon the 
planet as an asset, and to absorb what was meant for the future 
as well as what was meant for us. Great deposits of ore and 
coal, which will sleep deep beneath the soil for centuries before 
being needed by man, are capitalized and put upon the stock 
market, and while they sleep the interest upon them becomes 
a living burden upon consumption and industry, and the largess 
of nature becomes a weight upon mankind. 1 think we are 
inviting the economic dangers which some highly civilized 
nations have avoided. The warfare between the employer and 
the employed is a warfare centuries old, but it was never so 
fiercely waged as now. Do not put too much faith in statu¬ 
tory cures, and cling to that primary right which has been 
established, or indeed nothing has come to us from the past, 
the right of a man to work ! 

Equip yourself for the fight as best you can, and then fight 
it in the spirit of a broad patriotism. Remember that it is the 
patriot’s highest duty to be honest with his country. If he be¬ 
lieves a given course will disgrace and dishonor her in the eye 
of history, then he is no true lover of hers if he does not 
bravely say so. Patriotism is a noble thing, but like other 
noble things—like religion itself—it is subject to abuse. 
Junius, in one of his private letters to Wilkes, said, “ Let me 
recommend it to you to be much upon your guard against 
patriots.” He obviously meant professional patriots—that type 
by no means yet extinct, the sincerity of whose love for their 
country is shown by their desire to own it. The true patriot 
will be sleepless to prevent his country from being ever a mere 
instrun^ntality for private ends. He will insist upon the rights 
of his country, and will also insist upon the sacred performance 
of her obligations. He will regard her flag as a symbol, not only 


15 


of her power, but also of her honor. He will demand that 
the vital principle of justice shall be enthroned in her treatment 
of other nations as well as in her treatment of her own citizens. 
He would have her so strong that the international freebooter, 
no matter how high placed, should fear her, and so just that the 
weakest of nations should love and trust her. He will be proud 
of her high institutions of learning, of her system of diffused 
public instruction, of her attainments in science, of the genius 
of her inventors, and of her conquests in literature and art. 
And as he would have her peerless among nations, her citizens 
prosperous, happy, and free, he will abhor from his soul that 
gallery patriotism which, if it shall prevail, will usher in the 
rule of sophomores, of pigmy heroes, and of inconsequential 
statesmen. 

In dealing with the economic problems which lie so thickly 
about us ; in protecting individual freedom from the crude 
notions of the theorist and the ill considered action of society ; 
in keeping our democratic institutions pure, and inflexibly just to 
our own people, generous, and with no taint of oppression 
towards the feeblest of nations, you will find, I think, as noble 
and adequate a field for the strenuous life as in vaunting your own 
physical strength. And if you who go out from this college 
and from the other colleges this year, and who have gone out 
in the past, or who in other fields have won the capacity to 
think for the nation, shall keep up the fight and shall not “ tune 
your voices to the time,” never wavering in your allegiance to 
what is vital in our institutions, then the magnificent conception 
of the founders of the American Republic will be realized. 
We shall not be governed by mere opportunism, the ship of 
state will not shift her direction with every breeze that blows, 
but she will sail her appointed course, and safely carry with 
her her rich freightage of popular liberty. 


CONGRESS 



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